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As marketplace opportunities increase, a bandwidth battle once limited to the ground has shifted to the air.

“It’s kind of the sky’s the limit on a lot of the options you can provide,” said Travis Christ, chief marketing and sales officer for Row 44, a California-based firm that offers passengers access to live baseball games, CNBC and a host of other networks.

The Federal Communications Commission agreed last month to streamline regulations for satellite-based systems, a next frontier in broadband development. But ground-based companies with plans for further advancements want a slice of the shrinking spectrum pie.

Case in point: Qualcomm, the world’s largest maker of wireless chip devices.

“This could be a great example of spectrum that could be shared to enable a more efficient use,” said Dean Brenner, Qualcomm’s senior vice president for government affairs. The company has asked the FCC to approve a communications service Brenner says would take the current air-to-ground options “to the next level with the same degree of high-speed connectivity we are all used to on the ground.”

Qualcomm has petitioned the FCC to use the 14.0-14.5-GHz band of frequencies, which is currently allocated to fixed satellite services going from Earth to space. The company wants to launch a commercial, two-way mobile service that would use as many as 250 ground stations to transmit and receive communications from aircraft.

The Satellite Industry Association, Boeing and Wi-Fi competitors like Row 44 and Panasonic have pushed against the proposal for more than a year. They say it would interfere with current frequencies and threaten rivals’ in-flight offerings.

“If there’s any disruption to people’s existing business and investments, that’s a harmful outcome we just want to be really careful about,” Row 44’s Christ told POLITICO.

Qualcomm insists this secondary service would not cause a problem and has met with the FCC in early January to press its case. But competing companies fear such a move would set a jarring precedent.

“If the proposal were to move forward, it could potentially result in locking in this type of network architecture,” said Carlos Nalda, a telecommunications lawyer who represents Panasonic.

Airlines, eager for any additional income, love Qualcomm’s proposal. “More and more customers are carrying Wi-Fi-enabled devices, all of which require a high-speed air-ground network to maintain full in-flight connectivity,” United Airlines wrote in a comment to the FCC.

And Gogo, the leading Wi-Fi provider in the U.S., generally supports the proposal because it would open up more spectrum — something upon which it could capitalize. Gogo, which is in the process of becoming a public company, declined to comment. But it told the FCC that the move “offers a rare opportunity for the commission to meet growing consumer demand for improved air-ground data service.”